The North should pay its ecological debt, demands Cuban VP in Copenhagen

Cuban Vice-president Esteban Lazo said on Thursday in Copenhagen that the demands of a financing mechanism to reduce climate change in developed nations are a moral obligation of powerful nations.

At the Plenary of the United Nations Conference on Global Warming, Lazo highlighted that a long-term accord to fight the anomalies of nature can’t represent an additional restriction for the Third World, Prensa Latina news agency reported.

The Cuban vice-president considered that an agreement resulting from negotiations at this Conference can’t be indifferent to the realities of a profoundly unequal and exclusive world order either.

In this regard, he recalled that there are 2.5 billion people in the world living in poverty; 1.1 without fresh water; 2.6 without sanitation services; over 800 million illiterates and over 1 billion people who’re the victims of famine.

Lazo also mentioned the increase of global temperature, the decrease in the thickness of Arctic ice, the increase of sea level, and the increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

He praised the speeches made at the plenary by the heads of state from Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and Bolivia, Evo Morales, who with regard to climate change- expressed the feelings of all the members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA).

He recalled phrases by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro at the Rio de Janeiro Conference, still in force,

above all the one with which he stressed that the human species is in danger of disappearing.

Lazo coincided with statements made in Copenhagen by Chavez and Morales, with regard to the fact that consumer societies are the main nations responsible for the terrible destruction of the environment.